Taking a HARD look at the Business of Politics

A Washington Post article by Laurie David, entitled “Science a la Joe Camel” reports how the producers of “An Inconvenient Truth”, a documentary film about global warming, wished to make the documentary available FREE to classrooms, and offered the National Science Teachers Association 50,000 dvd copies of the film. The NSTA declined on the basis “that other “special interests” might ask to distribute materials, too; they said they didn’t want to offer “political” endorsement of the film; and they saw “little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members” in accepting the free DVDs.” Which is rather hypocritical of them, since they’ve been taking money from Big Oil companies and showing films produced by Big Oil for years.

Laurie states, “It’s bad enough when a company tries to sell junk science to a bunch of grown-ups. But, like a tobacco company using cartoons to peddle cigarettes, Exxon Mobil is going after our kids, too.”

The NSTA has received MILLIONS of dollars from Corporate interests, most of them in the Oil and Coal industries. The NSTA even gave Exxon Mobil (remember the Valdez?) an award in 2003 for its commitment to “science education”. And the NSTA is not the only organization to receive funds. According to the Exxon Mobil website, in the last year alone the Exxon Mobil foundation has handed out $42 million to key organizations that influence the way children from grammar to high school learn about science.

Now I know there are probably teachers out there who know when they’re showing something in the classroom that has been “tainted” by this viewpoint, and use it as an object lesson to teach students to look for the man behind the curtain and develop a healthy dose of scientific skepticism. The problem is that I’m sure there are also teachers who are taking these things at face value and actually teaching the oil company agenda and astroturf viewpoint despite good science that has, over and over, pointed to the realities of global warming.

Poking around on the NSTA website I also found a lot of information about Food Science. Interestingly enough, much of it pushes genetic engineering and mega agribusiness astroturf agendas. I’m sure that a follow the money approach from these types of industries would also show some ties to the NSTA. In an Annual Report pdf file dated 2003 I found some other interesting tie ins. Ahnert, who was the President of the Exxon Mobil Foundation was listed as a “Corporate Advisor” along with other corporations, and a link to ONE university. It would seem to me that, in order for our children to benefit from an unpoliticized science education, there should be many more advisors from higher education sources and
none from corporations who have an agenda. The comments on this subject on SlashDot bear out my thinking, since many of the posters there said they’d seen films in their high school classrooms that had been produced by the oil companies. The NSTA is trying, through Press Releases, to spin this so that they look less a lackey to corporate interests, by stating “The video in question, “You Can’t Be Cool Without Fuel” was not on our website.” but when multiple posters on /. point out that films such as “You can’t be Cool without Fuel” and others with a pro Oil Company slant have indeed been shown in US science classrooms, it makes it tough to believe that the NSTA is not without some bias here. If you take someone’s money, you are OWING.

Now, my suggestion, NSTA, is to make the viewing of “An Inconvenient Truth” mandatory in every classroom in the US, the way it is in Norway and Sweden. If this is done, and in future you keep oil company curriculum and teaching aids OUT of the classroom, then MAYBE we might, sometime in the far future, believe your spin. If you don’t allow special interests to run your Teaching Seminars, or exhibit and hand out teacher lesson plans written by those same special interests at your conferences, then MAYBE we might, sometime in the far future, believe your spin. If you stop offering lessons on Forestry written by paper companies such as Weyerhaeuser and International Paper, then MAYBE we might, sometime in the far future, believe your spin.

I know that the funding of education is in dire straits, but to owe special interests for the education of our children is a slippery slope.

Technorati Tags: NSTA, National Science Teacher’s Association, Exxon Mobil Foundation, Science Education, An Inconvenient Truth, Weyerhaeuser, International Paper

BitchSlapped on 11/29/06, 10:49 AM
Global Corporations, Various Idiots BitchSlapped, and
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